Review: Meaghan Smith and SNS

By pwalt | May 9, 2016 |

If there’s a show I could press rewind on and listen to all over again, it would be Meaghan Smith’s recent Maritime Fusion concert with Symphony Nova Scotia. It was really that much fun. She’s funny, she paints quirky miniature paintings, and she makes us laugh and cry. She’s the kind of gal you could totally girl crush on.

Her lovely songs were even more beautiful with the symphonic arrangements of SNS bassoonist Chris Palmer. Chris is a recently-named Associate Composer of the Canadian Music Centre, and he’s just the bee’s knees for pops artists like Meaghan and everyone else in town. He totally gets the point of the song, and he uses the full orchestral colour palette (including marimba, stomping, jazz clarinet and more) to make an already great tune snap, crackle and pop.

The orchestra sounded great under the leadership of Caper guest conductor Martin MacDonald, who gave us another “Baby Frances Update,” something he’s been doing on these Maritime Fusion concerts since the birth of his little girl 10.5 months ago. If he’s a sleep deprived Dad, you’d never know it from listening to The Original Ragtime Band and Jalousie (a Howard Cable arrangement), the only tunes on the show not penned by Smith. Sidebar: it’s always fun to attend an SNS Pops concert and eavesdrop on some of the audience, who kinda really didn’t know they would be getting to hear their favourite artist (Meaghan Smith) PLUS a full orchestra (“so many people on stage!”). There were some actual gasps – who knew symphony players could play and stamp their feet!?

The concert was enhanced by silk artist Holly Carr creating paintings onstage, playing off Meaghan’s lyrics and capturing the whole feeling of a French café in Soft Touch. Palmer gave a beautifully-executed solo to Concertmaster Renaud LaPierre in this, and it was all croissants and très charmante as we headed into the intermission, where Meaghan’s paintings sold briskly in the lobby.

Meaghan was sporting a new short hairdo, and looked fantastic in a sparkly blue gown, proudly showing off her baby bump, letting us know that Baby #2 will be joining brother River in the near future. So even more touching that Palmer’s arrangement of If you had a Heart ended with an audible heartbeat from the orchestra.

Meaghan’s “Hus-Band” (as she refers to Jason Mingo) accompanied her on solo guitar on some tunes, and she jokingly acknowledged that he good-naturedly puts up with her songs about her Exes (“we’ve done alright by that!”). They are a sweet couple, just the kind of young people we need to move to Nova Scotia, even if cuts to the film industry have hurt film workers like Jason, as Meaghan acknowledged.

She also occasionally accompanied herself, the stripped-down numbers reminding us that at heart, she is a great singer-songwriter. She writes about life and has a witty take on it. Her songs seem simple, but contain big truths, whether she’s writing about drifting apart from a close friend, trying to make a go of it in music (Baby, We Ain’t Poor), or her stoic non-emotive grandpa (“I tell him I love him, and he says “good enough!””). And that voice….really no-one to compare her with, although when she is soaring over the symphony strings, k.d. lang occasionally comes to mind. A lot of Meaghan’s songs have an old-fashioned sensibility, reminiscent of the 1940s/simpler days. Palmer’s arrangement of her Take Me Dancing had just the right feel – easy to imagine a quick step being danced to it with the big band sound coming from SNS. Howard Cable would have been so proud!

A number of songs were from her JUNO winning The Cricket’s Orchestra CD, including a driving Johnny Cashesque You Got Out, about an ex-boyfriend jailbird -captured by Holly Carr as a bird fleeing its gilded cage – who turned up at Meaghan’s door one day.

The concert ended with her anthemic Mirror, which was even more powerful than usual with the orchestra behind her, and then she gave the audience a Little Fish encore, a song she wrote for her first child. Walking into the audience, the evening ended with Five More Minutes and chirping crickets and fireflies from the orchestra. Classy.

Throughout Meaghan kept trying not to tear up as she referred to this as her “final” show – but we just can’t believe that….we’ll give her more than five more minutes, but then the world needs more Meaghan Smith (and Chris Palmer).

Oh, and fun fact: Baby Frances now has eight teeth and yells at rehearsals!